If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. -Laurence J. Peter US educator & writer (1919 - 1988)

When you think about starting your online business, success depends on the value of your strategic Internet marketing plan. It acts like a roadmap to guide you from one milestone to the next along your business journey.

What's Strategic Internet Marketing Plan?

There's an old saying that goes like that, "Success depends on planning your work, and then working your plan."

In the most successful business, the strategic Internet marketing plan is a fundamental written document which crafts a business idea in terms of goals, objectives, time lines, financial declarations, marketing consequences, competitive positions, directorial factors and goes on to show how the business owner will realize those goals, including a detailed marketing strategy. A complete business plan also contains a formal break-even analysis and a profit-and-loss projection analysis designed to give you an idea about the business's profitability, growth and cash flow.

Your plan must clearly define each step in the process. Be accurate and honest. Identify time lags and non-value-adding steps. Identify responsibility for each step. Brainstorm For problems in the process. Each step should illustrate an action in specific, clear and measurable terms. Keep your business plan flexible and simple so that you can quickly make changes as necessary. More importantly, your employees need to read and understand your company's goals, the activities required to achieve them, the timetable for accomplishing assigned tasks and each individual's responsibilities as part of the team.

The people most successful are those who have clear, specific goals and a timeframe; and they have an internal mechanism for monitoring the progress of business. They have been passionate about their business and eager to find ways to improve their own performance continuously in the search for excellence. These people dedicate themselves to learning everything they need to know about the business to achieve their dreams. They have exceptional knowledge of creating, managing, marketing and running their business with integrity and responsibility. And they pursue their dreams with persistence, passion and a continual confidence that they will succeed at any cost.

Is the importance of creating a personal plan before starting a business sounds dull? Miss this step and you'll almost certainly fail in whatever you try and accomplish. If you still doubt why I stress the importance of planning, go throw the web and ask any one you come across and you will learn in practical terms what happened to most of them in the creation of any project.

The reason behind the MOST online failures is that people believe in the hype they heard from unethical marketers. They believe in